SC
If you are looking for abuse of a monopoly it is the Leagal (so called) profession, these are the people who charge huge fees in search of huge compensation payouts from the industry.
It follows that the insurance company's have to charge large premiums to provide liability insurance to manufactures and maintenance company's. In addition to this the industry has to maintain a large paperwork trail to prove that the work has been done properly beond reasonable doubt to stand a chance in court as the leagal profession only has to prove a civil case on the balance of probability.
On the subject of Vans aircraft the reason that fleet quality is high is the ease of inspection, what you don't see is the bits of rejected structure as the homebuilder learns is craft............... It is almost imposable to inspect a composite aircraft to this depth without being present during almost all of the composite lay up and so the quality control of these aircraft in a problem.
The last thing I have to ask you is that if you were an LAA inspector fitting a safety critical bolt to an aircraft ( remembering that your family home and liberty are at risk if you get it wrong) what quality assurance would you be happy with ?